Re: Date is Incomplete - database application software and database theory

> Declarative programming paradise so to speak.
Precisely.

> Its pure fantasy

It's the application of the relational model to the declarative approach to application development.

...and the book is not even up to the standards of pop science
> junk such as Brian Greene's 'String Theory' fantasies.
You're subjective opinion of the material is irrelevant. If you have valid objections to it, please state them.

> Its really nothing more than a marketing brochure for the vendor named Versata
> which was trying to capitalize on the tech stock mania with some
> hopelessly naive tool probably based on rehashed ideas from the days
> of expert systems.
I am well aware of the fact that Versata was involved in producing the work, a fact I find particularly telling, given that they are purveyors of the object-oriented approach to data management. If What Not How is a marketing brochure for Versata, I'd fire that marketing director. Their name doesn't even appear in the text of the book, it's a footnote in the forward. The book is a general description of what a declarative application development platform based on the relational model would look like. The benefits are clear, as are the consequences of building such a system on a non-relational foundation.  Versata is a case in point.

The real question here is what is the point? If you could start from scratch and build the perfect application development environment, what would it look like? ASP.NET? J2EE? DCOM? CORBA? Web Services? Come on, you can't honestly believe that these platforms are solving the problems that application developers actually face. They are horrendously complicated frameworks for doing data management with object-oriented programming. If you fail to see the connection between the relational model and application development then you're missing the point. Received on Sun May 16 2004 - 22:21:17 CEST